<\/p>\n
Denis Wirtz<\/a><\/span>, vice provost for research at Johns Hopkins University, acknowledges there was a personal reason he co-founded a company that aims to stop the spread of cancer in the body.<\/p>\n “It’s envy of my siblings,” he says with a laugh. “They all are incredibly successful business people.”<\/p>\n But starting AbMeta Therapeutics also was a way for Wirtz to serve as a real-life example of the high value that Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medicine place on entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n “Now I can honestly say, ‘If I can do it, everyone can do it,'” says Wirtz, who is also a professor of engineering science at the Whiting School of Engineering. “Instead of being an advocate for greater entrepreneurship, now I can say even to colleagues with seniority that they should, as a way of measuring their impact, develop tech that is used in the real world and not just rely on journal articles to reach peers about their work.”<\/p>\n Wirtz formed AbMeta last fall with\u00a0Jamie Spangler<\/a><\/span>, an assistant professor in the Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering, and\u00a0Elizabeth Jaffee<\/a><\/span>, deputy director of the\u00a0Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis opportunity just presented itself in such an exciting way that we couldn\u2019t pass it up,\u201d says Spangler. \u201cIt\u2019s all about impact. How can I have the most impact in the shortest amount of time given the resources and training? I really see that as being at that interface between academic science and translational medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n Spangler\u2019s and Wirtz\u2019s labs together, and Jaffee independently, were investigating metastasis, the spread of cancer from a primary site in the body, which is responsible for 90% of all cancer-related deaths. Wirtz\u2019s interest began in 2016 when a researcher in his lab observed that cancer cells moved much faster when they were close together than when they were spread out. The lab determined the movement was caused by two molecules secreted by cancer cells and wanted to figure out a way to stop the cells from migrating.<\/p>\n \u201cIf cancer fatality was only a story of tumor growth, it wouldn\u2019t be the disease we talk about and fear so much every day. It would be confined to a certain space, and a surgeon could remove it and you\u2019d go on,\u201d says Wirtz, who has joint appointments in the departments of oncology and pathology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.<\/p>\n \u201cPatients with cancer don\u2019t die from the primary tumors,\u201d says Jaffee, whose research focuses on immune-based therapies for cancer. \u201cThey die from metastasis.\u201d<\/p>\n Wirtz\u2019s laboratory contacted Spangler, whose lab specializes in engineering antibodies\u2014proteins in the blood that specifically target other molecules. The antibody Spangler\u2019s lab developed to block the pathway associated with cell movement significantly reduced metastasis in a study on mouse tumors, Spangler says.<\/p>\n \u201cMost projects in science are just one challenge after another,\u201d says Spangler. \u201cIt\u2019s unusual, but exciting, that with this project, everything has kept working.\u201d<\/p>\n Jaffee, meanwhile, has been testing immunotherapies for almost 25 years on patients at high risk of metastasis, starting with a vaccine targeting pancreatic cancer. The overall five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is 9%, and for metastasized pancreatic cancer it is 3%, she says. Those who lived longer, she discovered, had an antibody that blocked the cancer\u2019s movement, but not everyone produced the antibody.<\/p>\n Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures<\/a><\/span>\u00a0introduced Jaffee, Spangler, and Wirtz to Joseph Carroll, director of life sciences for the IP Group, a hard science investment firm that discovers and builds early stage companies. Carroll was intrigued by the researchers\u2019 innovations, as well as by having a clinician (Jaffee), bioengineer (Spangler), and biologist (Wirtz) as founders\u2014three roles necessary in building a biotech company. Carroll created a plan and a funding model to build a startup around the trio.<\/p>\n \u201cDenis Wirtz is a provost at Hopkins, Liz Jaffee is a cancer center director, and Jamie Spangler is a superstar new faculty member,\u201d says Carroll. \u201cThat\u2019s an interesting triad that coalesced around a groundbreaking science, and we wanted to support this group and get their tech to market.\u201d<\/p>\n